A Vision of Yesterday
by Cryokina
Summary: At the 1943 World's Expo, Professor Phineas Horton presented his magnificent Synthetic Man. Whatever became of that android Human Torch? Can Captain America uncover the truth?
The last augmented soldier hit the floor of the warehouse, his yellow-plated exo-skeleton hissing and sparking. Captain America grabbed the package from his immobilised gauntlet. Behind his faceplate, the soldier cursed and raged silently. The Captain had disabled the speakers on his armour when he'd fried the electronics, leaving the AIM trooper trapped inside a metal cage.

Some small noise made Steven Rogers whirl around to see one of the AIM soldiers with a plasmacaster trained on his chest. Her suit was still partially operational, and she'd managed to make it crawl over to an undamaged weapon. Time seemed to slow down for the Captain as he considered his options. He didn't have time to draw his shield from his back. Dodging wouldn't be an option; the plasma bursts were too wide for that. Even with his enhanced reflexes, he'd never be able to dodge in time.

Suddenly, the trooper stiffened in pain. The suit whined, and she screamed as the neural feedback from her implants coursed through her nerves. A ghostly green hand reached through her chest. It withdrew without a trace, and the AIM trooper collapsed, unconscious but alive.

The Vision stood over the trooper, resplendent in his gold and green, concern on his face. "Are you alright, Captain?"

Steve laughed once, swinging an arm around to work out some of the pains in his muscles. "It's not me that'll need medical attention, Vision. Call the clean-up crews, tell them it's done. The package is secure." Steve sat down heavily against a wall, wiping some of the dirt from his face with his arm. The Vision remained standing.

"Captain?"

"Come on, Viz. You can call me Steven at least."

"As you wish. Steven, why do you treat me differently to the others?"

Steve glanced at the Vision, saw the worry written on his magenta face. The Mind Stone in his forehead winked in the warehouse light like a third eye. "What do you mean?"

The Vision hesitated. "I understand that I am... different from humans, even by the standards of the Avengers. Even though I have proven my worth, I recognise that it will take some time for my fellows to fully accept me as a person."

The Vision looked directly at Steve, and he suppressed a shudder. Gazing into that gemstone on his forehead was dangerous. The mysteries of infinity spiralled within it, and looking at it too long gave him a terrible feeling of vertigo. "But you are not like them, Steven. While the others are discomfited by my strange appearance, you accepted me as a teammate quicker than I could have anticipated. Why?"

Steve shrugged, looking at the floor. "I guess you remind me of an old friend." He pressed his hand to the commlink in his ear. "Our ride's still a while out. They're having trouble taking down AIM's distortion field. Maybe I'll tell you the story while we wait."

Vision nodded, floating cross-legged just off the floor. "I'm all ears, Steven."

Steve chuckled, gazing through the skylight at the first stars emerging from the fading day. "It all started one morning in 1944..."

Icy gales swept through the busy streets of Brooklyn. It was a bright cold January morning, and one of the most remarkable people in the world stood huddled near a doorway. Like everyone else, his collar was high and his hat was low. Unlike them, this wasn't to keep out the wintry chill, for he could not feel it. No, this was a man who wanted to conceal his identity. No mean feat, considering that he was well over six feet tall and had the physique of Adonis.

"You really made a name for yourself with those films, Steve," Agent Margaret Carter of the SSR said, strolling up to him. She wore a pale blue overcoat, flecked with snow, and a bright crimson Stetson. "Perhaps you should try harder to stay incognito."

"Incognito?" Captain Steven Rogers asked, incredulous. "You call that hat incognito?"

"It's just unusual enough that people don't remember me," Peggy replied, slightly tilting her Stetson. The heads of passers-by did turn to watch, but never very many, and never for very long.

"When they see me, at the very most, they will remember my hat. Not one of them will remember my face. Now, observe this fellow," Peggy said, pointing at the figure approaching them. "Here is a man that's remarkable because he's trying too hard to be unremarkable. Can you guess why?"

Steve was at a loss. "Is it the grey tie?" he said eventually.

"Amongst other things," Peggy replied, rolling her eyes. "Men. So few have any skill at espionage."

The man couldn't have been less colourful if he'd been sculpted from clay. His suit was charcoal grey, while his tie was a darker gunmetal that matched his shoes. His shirt, his hair, his thick moustache, all were grey. Even his pale skin seemed faintly grey, almost like the slate sky overhead. He looked disturbed and bedraggled, as if he'd recently been through some terrible crisis. Steve recognised that look. He'd seen it on the faces of soldiers after a battle, the haunted stare of men who were regretting their choices.

"This is our contact?" Steve said quietly.

Peggy shrugged. "Hmph. Yes, he does look like he's had more whiskey than sleep, doesn't he?" But then the man was in earshot, and she said no more. The stranger's face brightened as he seemed to recognise them, the shell-shock disappearing. He hurried forward, almost tripping over his own feet.

"Miss Carter!" the man exclaimed, vigorously pumping her hand up and down. "An honour, truly an honour. Thank you so much for coming all this way." He turned to Steve. "Ah, Captain! A pleasure, yes, an absolute pleasure to make your acquaintance!" He spoke quickly and sharply, as if afraid to waste time getting the words out.

"But where are my manners?" the man continued. "My name, my new friends, is Doctor Phineas Horton. I must assume our mutual friend Howard has told you about the reasons for your visit?"

Steve frowned. "He didn't. All I got was a telegram asking me to return to New York for a few days, to meet up with an old pal of his."

Peggy nodded. "I got the same treatment. Howard isn't exactly forthcoming with information, especially when who knows what ears might be listening."

"Then you don't know of my work?" Horton said, looking anxious.

"I haven't exactly had time to keep up with scientific research," Peggy shrugged. "Too many Nazis in my way." She glanced at Steve.

"I have heard of you, actually," Steve said, though he was a little uncertain. "Didn't a Professor Horton work on the Synthetic Man? He was on display at the Stark Expo last year."

"Ah, you have heard of my work!" Horton said, his face brightening again. Steve noticed that there was some colour in the man; his eyes were a deep blue. "Come with me, come with me," he continued, starting to walk away. "We must talk further, out of this wind and this cold."

Horton took them to a disused warehouse on the other side of town, away from the bustling crowds. It was a squat red-brick structure, though the falling snow had painted it so that it almost blended in with the clouded grey sky.

Horton fished a set of keys from his back pocket and rifled through them with shaking hands. Steve wondered whether he shook from the chill or from excitement.

"Welcome to my humble abode," Horton said, ushering them through the doorway. "Please excuse the clutter..."

Peggy gasped. "You're not joking," she said. The warehouse was filled, seemingly from top to bottom, with junk. Old scrap metal, rolls of wiring, a massive industrial coal-fired furnace, barrels of oil, and all of it coated with dirt and grime and rust and mould.

Something moved with a clatter, and Steve instinctively grabbed his shield from his back, where it had been hidden under his overcoat. The overhead lights revealed something like a fridge rolling towards them, balanced on a single wheel. Two curving arms snaked out from either side, and a cluster of lights blinked from the front. Strangest of all, it was wearing a butler's uniform. The coat-tails dragged on the ground behind it.

"I see you've met my dear friend Sinclair?" Horton asked, closing the door behind them. "He will now take your coats and hats."

The automaton whirred up to them, holding out its arms. They ended in metal claws that had been painted like gloves. Steve handed over his coat and hat, as did Peggy. It rumbled away, carrying the coats, and hung them carefully on a nearby hatstand. It gave a happy beep.

Horton started to walk away, followed closely by Sinclair, and he gestured for Steve and Peggy to follow. "Have either of you ever seen a Czech production called _Rossum's Universal Robots_?"

Peggy nodded, while Steve had never heard of it. "I have, once. Not terribly enjoyable, all things considered."

"But you are thus familiar with the idea of a _robot_?"

"Indeed. We've seen mechanical men deployed by HYDRA, the Dreadnoughts, but nothing as swift or friendly as... Sinclair, I believe you said?"

"Yes, yes!" Horton said, leading them through the maze of junk. "A robot, an automaton. A servant for mankind, created by artificial means... But Sinclair is but the smallest part of what I want to create. He is but a marvellous toy, and HYDRA's machine-men are no more wondrous than a Sherman tank. In Čapek's play, the robots are almost indistinguishable from humans. They are like people, living and thinking. I dream of making such things a reality."

"Like an android?" Steve said. Horton glanced at him, smiling. Peggy gave him a quizzical look, and he grinned back. "I used to read a lot of _Captain Future_ before I enlisted," he explained.

"I, too, am a follower of the pulp genre," Horton said. "It gave me many of my ideas, though alas I am nowhere near developing his marvellous vibration drive!" Steve laughed, while it was Peggy's turn to look confused.

They entered into a clearing in the labyrinth, and Horton turned to face them. He gestured sharply to Sinclair, who began to scurry around, attending to different machines and banks of computers. Horton stood in front of a circular curtain, which was hung around something in the middle of the space.

"In a few moments, you will see my life's work. Howard Stark, our mutual acquaintance, he believed in me, but the military did not." Horton's face fell as he slipped into the memories of his past. "Time and time again they rejected my proposals for using androids in warfare. They didn't want more expendable humans, they wanted better ones. They favoured Erskine and his Vita-Rays. They even chased after rumours of Atlantis! I can hardly believe it, even now! Such an insult!"

Horton took a breath to calm himself. "But that is all in the past now. I hold no further ill-will towards Erskine, God rest his soul, and I have no quarrel with his Super-Soldier either."

Steve didn't quite know what to say. "Er... thanks?"

Sinclair rolled up to Horton and gave another little beep. Horton's anger was forgotten as he grinned at them. "But as I was saying, the military wanted soldiers that were more than human. With the inspiration of Mr. Victor Timely, an old friend of mine, that is just what I have created!"

Professor Horton gripped the curtain with both hands. He was trembling. "Without further ado, I present to you my android, the future of mankind, the Synthetic Man! His name is Jim Hammond... the Human Torch!"

He flung aside the curtain, revealing the android. It stood tall inside a glass cylinder that was topped with an array of strange electrical equipment that Steve couldn't identify. It looked just like... Steve corrected himself. _He_ was indistinguishable from a normal human, dressed in a red jumpsuit with the symbol of a golden flame on his chest. His eyes were closed, and he looked almost asleep.

The chamber cracked open with a hiss of escaping vapour. The android's eyes shot open, and Steve could see that they were sky blue. They certainly didn't look like the eyes of a machine.

Half of the cylinder swung open smoothly in a cloud of vapour, and the Synthetic Man stepped forward. "I won't bore you with the details," Horton said, grinning madly as his creation approached. "His bones are ceramic, his blood is coolant, his mind sparks with lightning. He is as close to a human being as he could possibly be."

The android didn't react to them for a few moments. He stared at his hands as if he was waiting for something to happen. At last, he looked up at the trio of humans and spoke.

"I'm not burning," he said, incredulous. "Professor, you finally did it!"

"Of course I did, Jim!" Horton said. "I promised you I would find an answer, did I not?"

"You did indeed, Professor," the Synthetic Man said. He looked at Peggy and Steve and offered his hand. "Hello, my name is Jim Hammond."

Steve shook first. "I'm Steven Rogers," he said, glancing at Horton. "Sorry, was that something about burning?"

"Ah," Horton said. "Jim had an occasional problem with catching fire."

"You make it sound like he was meant to catch fire, but couldn't," Peggy said, raising an eyebrow.

"That's exactly what I meant," Horton said. "There was also an issue with him being unable to extinguish himself. Both of those problems should no longer be present."

Horton realised that neither of his guests was quite sure what he was talking about. "Jim, show them," he said, taking a step back.

"Flame on!" Jim exclaimed, and burst into flames. Steve and Peggy backed away, alarmed. The android was covered, head to toe, in sheets of roaring fire. The heat was terrific, and Steve was suddenly glad he'd given his coat to Sinclair.

"When he says the trigger phrase "Flame on!"," Horton explained, shielding his eyes from the luminescent form, "he instantly catches alight. The flames do not burn him, but they can most certainly burn his foes!"

"Remarkable," Peggy said, gazing at the artificial man wreathed in flames. Just as suddenly as they had started, the flames vanished, leaving Jim Hammond none the worse for wear. The Synthetic Man was smiling widely, and the expression certainly looked authentic.

But something had caught Steve's eye, something that had shone in the light from the Human Torch. He used the edge of his shield to lever out the thing from the pile. It was a torn sheet of metal, a dull grey-green colour, stamped with an illegible serial number and splashed with red-brown mud.

"I know this," Steve said, turning the metal over and over in his hands. There was no denying it, for there was nothing else it could be. He turned to look at Horton, who had blanched. "This is from a HYDRA Dreadnought," he said, staring down the smaller man. Jim Hammond looked a little confused, but he made no move to oppose Steve.

Nearby, Steve heard the faint click that meant that Peggy was ready and willing to shoot Horton if he was, in fact, a HYDRA sympathiser. "I don't suppose you want to tell us anything about how that got there, Professor Horton?" Peggy asked in the slightly-too-calm voice that she used when violence was imminent.

"You've caught me out, I'm afraid," Horton said with a nervous half-smile. He rubbed his hand together as he spoke. "There's a businessman in Finland who owed me a favour. He shipped in the remains of these HYDRA creations from the Eastern Front, and they've served well in fuelling my research. I know that it's likely illegal, but I could not have progressed without that scrap. I've done no harm..."

Steve tossed the plate back into the heap, and now he could pick out other details: an optic unit, a booster foot, a core fringed with thick torn cables. More than a little of this junk was the remains of HYDRA's death machines. He closed his eyes, breathed out slowly through his nose, and tried to dispel the visions that beset him.

 _-snowflakes whirl as the machine guns spin up, barrel glowing. The Dreadnought opens fire, laying open three men with superheated lead. Steve dives just in time, catching one of the Russians before the Dreadnought tears him apart like his comrades. Steve stands, shield raised, and sprints forward, over the bodies and towards the machine-man, death in his eyes. Bullets spring off the shield as he runs, faster and faster-_

Steve opened his eyes. "You've done harm, Professor," Peggy said, disgust in her voice. "I watched those machines kill dozens of men on the Eastern Front. They should have been left in the snow where they fell."

"You can kill so many things in this world, Captain," Horton said, suddenly weary. He sat on a nearby stool. Peggy's gun didn't waver as she tracked him, but he didn't seem alarmed. "My wife was taken from me by illness, my son by an accident with a motorcar. Death comes for us all in the end. Even you, Captain, after killing so many, will in turn be cut down. Nothing seems permanent in this life."

Horton looked up, and Steve could see his eyes were wet with tears. There was a beeping sound from somewhere nearby. "But there is one thing that cannot be killed, and its name is progress."

The skylight in the roof caved in with a burst of snow. A metal figure maybe eight feet tall slammed to the ground, grey-green and dappled with mud. Massive pauldrons protected its shoulders, and the thick arms ended in the unmistakable barrels of heavy weapons. Clusters of red eyes gleamed from a metallic skull, cables running into its mouth in mimicry of HYDRA's own ominous logo.

"Dreadnought!" Steve shouted, his mind racing to process the situation. A HYDRA machine that shouldn't exist had just crashed through the ceiling. Two parts of him went to war, but pragmatism won out over curiosity. The _how_ could wait. Faster than a normal man could move, the shield was out in front of him, protecting Steve from the massive machine's guns.

"HYDRA? In New York? This can't be happening!" Horton stammered, flinging himself beneath a heavy workbench. Jim looked startled and backed away a few paces, overwhelmed. Another skylight fell in, then a third, followed swiftly by the grinding crunches of HYDRA Dreadnoughts landing in piles of scrap.

"They've built more!" Peggy cried, crouching behind a solid-looking heap of crates. Steve rushed to join her, shield over his head to block machine-gun fire. "How is that possible?" Steve said, joining her at the crates. Bullets sprayed through the air in brief bursts as the Dreadnought obeyed its programming and suppressed enemy targets.

"I haven't the slightest idea," Peggy said, swapping the handgun she had concealed in her jacket for a rather larger-calibre model hidden in her purse. "I had believed that the schematics for the Dreadnought were lost aboard that submersible in the Sea of Okhotsk. Evidently they had a backup."

On the other side of the room, Jim Hammond seemed to notice that one of the Dreadnoughts was advancing on him. "Flame on!" he yelled at last, and the incandescent figure swept out a hand, melting a line of bullets before they could strike him. Steve remembered that the Dreadnoughts had thermal vision, and the trio of huge machines turned to face the Human Torch, ignoring Steve and Peggy.

"That's a little impolite," Peggy said, lowering her gun. "I've come to expect proper manners during a firefight."

While Peggy took this chance to reload and take a few precise shots at the Dreadnoughts' weaker backs, Steve vaulted over cover and ran closer to Torch's position. He was sending out sheets of fire, melting bullets in mid-air, but the flames did little to the armoured hulls of the machine-men.

The Torch put his hands together, and Steve saw the flames there gather and intensify. "Captain!" the Torch called, his voice distorted by the crackling of his flames. "Let's clear some space!"

Steve saw what Hammond intended, and between the synthezoid's inhuman precision and the super-soldier's instincts, their plan worked perfectly. The Torch launched a torrent of flame from his outstretched hands, which impacted on the Captain's shield and rebounded across the room. Steve tilted his shield and Hammond's beam swept across the room, cutting through armour and scrap metal equally. The first Dreadnought was cut clean in half at the waist by the beam, and the second one lost a chunk of its armoured pauldrons. Peggy made the most of this, emptying a clip into the exposed shoulder. Something smoked, and the second machine's left arm went limp.

The beam cut out and the Torch paused, catching his breath. The third machine wasn't armed with machine guns, Steve realised as it approached Hammond; it was a close-quarters variant, equipped with massive pneumatic hammers. "Look out!" Steve cried, throwing his shield. The vibranium disc caught the Dreadnought in the leg, making it stumble backwards a step. The piledriver arm missed the Torch by a few feet, but it left a crater a foot deep in the concrete floor.

The ranged Dreadnought clanked towards Carter. Its functioning arm was pointed upright as it engaged a reloading mechanism and gave the glowing barrel time to cool, but it used its other arm as a crude club. Peggy ducked under its swing, a massive blow that tore an old overturned desk to splinter. She clambered into the heaps of junk that surrounded the clearing, letting the garbage slow the ponderous machine down. "I'll handle this, Steve!" she shouted, seeing the Captain turning to her. "Take the other one out!"

Steve returned his attention to the melee unit. The Torch was actually flying, keeping himself in the air with bursts of flame from his feet. He used one hand to fire intermittently to keep him balanced, while the other directed flaming blasts at the machine below him. It emitted a great grinding roar and swung at him, barely missing.

Steve Rogers had not become America's greatest soldier for no reason. He leapt into the fray, tossing his shield as he jumped. He rolled as the disc smacked into the machine-man's head and ricocheted away, straight into his outstretched hand. The Dreadnought glared at him and swung one hammer, but Steve was already moving, and the Torch was still in the air, taunting the HYDRA war machine before soaring out of its reach.

From somewhere nearby, there came a sound like an avalanche. Steve's thoughts turned to Peggy, and with a final deflection of one of the Dreadnoughts' clumsy blows, he started to sprint in the direction she had gone. Steve leapt like a gazelle up the heaps of scrap, ignoring the broken iron bars that tore at him. A cloud of dust had risen up, and at the heap's top he saw a shallow slope of scrap before him, stretching out across an area the size of a room.

Peggy emerged from the cloud of dust, hair thick with cobwebs and a tear in her sleeve. "It's good and buried," she said. "Don't tell me you didn't think I could handle one HYDRA war machine? Get back and help Hammond."

But Steve's lapse in concentration proved to be a grave error. By the time he returned, the Torch was down, crumpled in a heap, his flame extinguished. The Dreadnought was raising its hammer for another blow, and Steve realised that Jim wouldn't be back on his feet in time. Those hammers could crumple a Sherman's armour; he didn't want to see what they'd do to unprotected flesh, human or not.

Steve did the only thing he could. Shield grasped in both hands, muscles braced for the impact, he leapt between the pneumatic hammer and its intended victim.

The hammer hit the shield with a sound like a thousand church bells, all chiming in Steve's ears at once. He felt more than heard the Dreadnought preparing to strike another blow. It was all he could do to stay standing with the room swinging around him, but he was still aware enough to see the machine's arm swinging from the right.

He tried to block this next blow, but it was too much for him. Steve found himself on the floor, a few feet away from the Torch. The Dreadnought stomped slowly closer, raising its arm for a final strike. Steve reached for the shield, but his arm wouldn't obey him. His fingers were boneless and weak, and his head was pounding like a bass drum.

"Don't!" Horton cried, loud enough to be heard over the sirens in Steve's head. Steve had no idea what he meant until he realised that the armoured fist headed for his face had paused mid-swing. The Dreadnought, impossibly, had obeyed Horton. "Stand down," the old man ordered from underneath his shelter, and the HYDRA machine did as he asked. Steve scrambled to his feet, panting and unsteady. Nearby, the Torch stirred and looked up.

"I'm so sorry," Horton said, suddenly unable to meet Steve's gaze. The ringing faded quickly, but Steve still had trouble standing. The machine towered over them both, immobile as a statue. "This wasn't meant to happen this way. The machine-men weren't meant to try and kill you. I didn't predict that they'd still be so lethal..."

"You wanted your Synthetic Man to save Steve," Peggy said, gun trained on Horton instead of the machines. "You never had the funding to pull this operation together. You owe a lot of money to that Finnish businessman, don't you?" Horton cringed at her words, but she went on, putting the pieces together.

"So you put everything you had into the Synthetic Man," Peggy continued. "You spent a lot of money perfecting him, and with what you had left you patched up those HYDRA machines. You lured us into an ambush; the Dreadnoughts would leap out, but Jim would defeat them, saving the life of America's most beloved soldier in the process. You'd be drowning in government grant money after that. Am I wrong?"

Jim Hammond had watched this exchange quietly and reservedly up to this point, but when Horton didn't refute anything, the Torch looked horrified. "Professor!" he exclaimed. "This can't be true. Tell me it's not..."

Horton didn't raise his head. "You are right," he said, defeated. "All I wanted was for them to recognise Jim's brilliance. But fate would not align to put him in a situation where that brilliance could be seen... so I had to force fate's hand."

"Professor!" Jim said, stunned. He took a step backwards, shaking his head. "This can't be happening. You made me, you designed me! You're like a father to me. No, you _are_ my father. You can't have done something like... like this!"

"I did," Horton said, his voice shaking. "I did it out of love, my boy, but I did it nonetheless. Is a crime for the betterment of all still a crime?"

"You taught me right from wrong," Jim said after a few moments, his voice soft. "You taught me what justice is, even if you didn't live up to your own standards. You're going to jail."

Horton sat on his bench, motionless. The artificial man he'd created looked at him with a pain that Steve found familiar. In the distance, sirens sounded, and Steve glanced at Peggy.

"I alerted the police as soon as the Dreadnought broke in. It pays to be prepared." Peggy frowned. "You look like death. Come here." She hoisted one of Steve's arms over her shoulder, holding him. Steve was surprised that she could support his enhanced bulk, but he was glad of her support.

Horton didn't even look up as the NYPD entered the warehouse carefully. They maintained an air of professionalism, but Steve could tell straightaway that some of them had recognised him from the propaganda films. "We received a call from the... SSR?" one officer asked, approaching them. "What's the situation?"

"Strategic Scientific Reserve," Peggy said, holding out her badge. The officer raised an eyebrow, glancing between the unusual pair, then over their shoulders at the machine and his creator. "That man is in possession of classified military technology. Place him under arrest."

Jim Hammond stood stock-still as his creator was led away in shackles. Steve watched him for a few minutes as the police buzzed around, questioning Carter and her credentials. The HYDRA Dreadnought was surrounded with police tape, and one of the officers arranged for a forklift to be brought in to move the machine.

"Captain Rogers?" Horton said weakly as he was led past them. The officer escorting him tried to haul him away, but Steve raised a hand to stop him. The professor looked up at Steve with watery blue eyes, but Steve realised that those weren't tears of sadness. At least, not entirely.

"Don't you see, Captain?" the little man said at last. "He's not a machine, not like anything HYDRA's ever made. He made the choice to arrest me of his own free will. He's not an automaton; there are no strings on him." Horton laughed weakly at Steve's puzzled expression. "He's a real boy, Captain. Take care of him for me."

Peggy and Steve shared a glance as Horton was taken away and bundled into a police car. He kept glancing back, eyes brimming with tears, at his marvellous Synthetic Man.

"Hammond," Steve called out as they were leaving. The synthezoid still stood motionless, even as the police milled around him uncertainly. Some of the officers looked at him oddly, and one touched his arm, but he shook him off. The Synthetic Man kept his head low as he spoke. Jim's voice, echoing strangely in the silence, would stay with Steve for the rest of his days.

"Steven Rogers. Perhaps I don't want you to see... that even an android can cry."

"And after that he lit up, took off into the night," Steve concluded. "You aren't the first artificial man I've fought alongside, Vision. I don't doubt that you can be every inch the hero he was."

"Thank you, Steven," the Vision said. It might have been Steve's imagination, but he thought he could see tears in Vision's eyes. "I'd never thought that I might not have been the first. You've given me something to strive towards."

"He was great," Steve said with a nod, rising as he heard the approaching roar of their Quinjet. Tony had finally found a way around AIM's distortion shield. The aircraft was landing outside the warehouse, Barton in the pilot seat. "One of the best."

"Steve?" Vision asked as they climbed aboard the Quinjet. His worry had long since disappeared, replaced by fascination. "What happened to Jim Hammond?"

"Maybe later, Viz," Steve said, taking his seat inside the aircraft with a sigh. A chill wind whispered in around the doorframe as the exit ramp closed, and it brought back other old memories. "I'll tell you about the Invaders some other time."


End file.
